John A. Van Den Bosch made the best of the worst of times.
John was born in 1892 in Zeeland, Michigan. He was the great-grandson of Tamme and Grietje Bont Van Den Bosch, who emigrated from the Province of Drenthe in the Netherlands to Zeeland in the spring of 1848.
John married Frederika Lugers in 1912. William, the first of their 12 children, was born later that year.
When William was a boy, people around Zeeland lived on small farms and raised chickens, cows and pigs. They also grew crops. In the parlor of their farmhouses, they had a radio they would gather around in the evenings for news and entertainment. They bought groceries, feed and seed, and hardware from Albert LaHuis, Dick Huizenga, and William DePree. They banked with Jacob Den Herder.
These were the people John and William served in the early years of their business. But initially John and William worked for other business owners: John worked as a feed salesman for a Chicago firm and William worked in the warehouse for the next owner of LaHuis’s, David DeBruyn.
Like many people, after the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed, John and William lost their jobs. With nothing left to do, they started their own business.
In 1932, John and William pooled their money to buy a used truck to deliver vegetables from farms to food processors. But Michigan had “only nubbins,” so they began by hauling hybrid corn out of Indiana.
In 1933, John and William bought a new truck for $1,500. Then the banks went on “holiday.” In the days before deposit insurance, this resulted in a “haircut” for everyone who, and every business that, had money in the bank, meaning they lost part of their savings. Left with only $300, John and William continued, living on “sweat and tears.”
In 1935, the John A. Van Den Bosch Company bought a “mixer” and a small grain elevator. They also expanded their truck route. To get more space for his family of 12, John moved them and his business from Centennial Street in Zeeland to Washington Street, just west of State Street, where there was also room for a barn.
The John A. Van Den Bosch Company survived because the Depression had forced even city people to have 10-15 chickens in their yard, and all those chickens needed feed.
Soon, John’s son Marv was driving a truck and his daughter Amy was keeping the books.
In those days, truck drivers had to be patient and handy. The truck would often carry vegetables from Michigan to the Campbell Soup Plant in Chicago, or bring corn from Indiana back to Michigan. But in the 1930s, there were no interstate highways. Thus, to get from Zeeland to Chicago, a driver would take Chicago Drive into downtown Holland, go west on Eighth Street, south on River Avenue, west on 17th Street and South Shore Drive, then south on Saugatuck Road.
He’d go from there through every small town along the lakeshore. Top speed for a truck, when it wasn’t traveling through town, was 35 miles per hour. To slow down, because trailers didn’t have brakes, drivers had to switch gears. If they pushed the truck brakes too hard, the truck and trailer would jack-knife. Thus, to drive to the southside of Chicago and back took 12-15 hours.
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Drivers also had to be mechanics: tires would blow and axles would freeze. Drivers had to take spare parts along with them. One truck driver, while changing a tire, lost his life when a tire rim flew off and struck him. That dead man’s fiancée, Anna Schaap, became William’s wife.
Needing more space, in 1939, the John A. Van Den Bosch Company moved to a facility on E. Washington Street, on a triangular piece of land bordered by railroad tracks.
Then, in 1941, World War II began — along with a rationing program to ensure material for the war effort. This meant truck and feed mill parts were difficult to get. This problem became acute for the Van Den Bosches when a fire consumed the plant on Washington Street. Although the building was insured, the materials needed to rebuild it weren’t available. So, John had to find another way to survive.
That’s the topic of next week’s story.
— Steve VanderVeen is a resident of Holland. His book, “The Holland Area’s First Entrepreneurs,” is coming soon. You may reach him at [email protected].
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